Statement of Privacy

The Marine & Environmental Research Institute places a high priority on protecting your privacy. This privacy policy was created in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to the privacy of our website visitors. This policy explains what types of information is collected by our website, shawinstitute.org, and how this information is used.

What Personally Identifiable Information is Collected

Visitors who sign up to receive our e-communications voluntarily provide us with contact information (such as name and e-mail address). We may use this information for specific, limited purposes. You may always “opt out,” either now or at any time in the future, if you do not wish to receive our messages.

IP addresses

The Marine & Environmental Research Institute uses your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, to administer shawinstitute.org, and for statistical metrics used to track website visitor traffic.

Cookies

shawinstitute.org uses “cookie” messages to automatically help provide better services. They remind us who you are and your preferences for our website based on what you’ve done and told us before. The “cookie” is placed in your computer and is read when you come back to our website. Cookies let us take you to the information and features you’re particularly interested in. They also let us track your usage of shawinstitute.org, so we know which parts of our site are most popular. You can reject cookies or cancel them by instructing your Web browser accordingly.

How Your Information May Be Used

We use your personal information to provide you with personalized service; to send e-mail alerts to you; to answer your requests; to process your membership application; etc. You may choose to opt out at any time, which will cease all communications from us. We may also use your information to track visitor of our website. This lets us see which of our features are the most popular so we can better serve our users’ needs. It also lets us provide aggregate data about our traffic (not identifying you personally, but showing how many visitors used which features, for example) to outside parties.

Email Privacy

The Marine & Environmental Research Institute does not provide, sell, or rent email addresses to anyone outside the organization.

External Links

shawinstitute.org includes links to external websites. These links do not fall under the shawinstitute.org domain, and the Marine & Environmental Research Institute is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of external websites. Your use of any linked website is solely at your own risk. We encourage you to review the privacy statements of Web sites you choose to link to from www.meriresarch.org so that you can understand how those Web sites collect, use, and share your information.

Modifications

We may amend this privacy policy from time to time; please review it periodically. We maintain the option to modify this privacy at any time by electronic notice posted on our website. Your continued use of our website after the date that such notices are posted will be deemed to be your agreement to the changed terms.

Contact Information

The Marine & Environmental Research Institute welcomes your comments regarding this Statement of Privacy. If you believe that we have not adhered to this Statement, please contact us at “info at meriresearch dot org”. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly determine and remedy the problem.